


Withdrawal

by taylor_tut



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fever, Gen, Sick Character, Sick Jonathan "Jon" Sims The Archivist, Sickfic, Strained Friendships, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25426621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: A prompt from my tumblr! "Maybe Jon after the coma, everyone is scared of him, ignoring him, only talking to him to ask if he's been taking statements and he's trying to quit them. Daisy or Basira come across him passed out in the archives for however long, burning up, sick, so hungry, and begrudgingly care for him?"
Comments: 5
Kudos: 196





	Withdrawal

“Alright, who’s going to make sure Jon didn’t take a statement today before we go?” Daisy asks, and Melanie and Basira groan. 

“I did it yesterday,” Melanie says. “And you the day before. It’s Basira’s turn.” 

“I’ll remind you that I’m the one who went into his office to turn the building heat down,  _ while he was in it, _ ” Basira argues. 

“But that didn’t count; that’s why we played paper, scissors, stone for it!” Melanie fights, and Daisy rolls her eyes. “Then we’ll play paper, scissors, stone again,” she decides. All three draw their weapon of choice, and Basira curses loudly. It’s been days since Jon has taken a statement, and he’s irritable. 

That’s an understatement. 

Normal Jon is irritable. This Jon… he’s unpleasant; he’s vocal and snide and mean. He apologizes when he knows he’s gone too far, which is usually several steps past “too far,” and he doesn’t make excuses, but it doesn’t really help them feel any less like ensuring that Jon is still abstaining is like being chosen to climb up the side of a volcano to see whether it’s going to blow or lie dormant for another year. 

Daisy has surprisingly little sympathy for him, considering she’d been the exact same way, and Melanie--well, Melanie is difficult to read. Basira is convinced there’s very little that Jon could do right or wrong to change her opinion of him one way or the other. 

“You two go on ahead,” she says before she leaves the room. “Get us a table at the bar. I’ll meet you in a few. Granted that I survive this check-in.” 

“If we don’t hear from you in half an hour, we’ll pour one out for you,” Melanie promises. Basira offers her a rude hand gesture as she shuts the door behind her. 

She knows he’s in the Archives--they keep tabs on where he is in order to more reliably avoid him. This shouldn’t take long, but she’s still dreading it even though she knows that all she’s going to do is make sure he’s still miserable, shine a light in his pupils, and leave without inviting him to the bar or reminding him to take a break to drink water or eat food or sleep. 

The door is open, but because she’s made the mistake of startling him once (he’d whirled around and swung at her, might have hit her if she weren’t used to this from her previous career, and worse than that had been the broken, tearful apology that had almost made her feel sorry for him), so she knocks. 

She doesn’t get a reply. 

Pushing through the precipice and into the Archives, Basira isn’t surprised at what she finds: Jon is sitting at the table, an old statement in hand and a tape recorder--oddly off, she notices with some curiosity, at the same time she realizes that Jon isn’t actually sitting up, but with his head down on his arms.

Ah. It’s no real revelation that he’s been pulling some ridiculous hours lately, tearing through statement after statement hoping that there might be a point at which he feels some relief and finding with increasing dismay that there more than likely isn’t. 

“Jon,” she calls. She’s not sure why--there’s no way he’s taken a live statement if he’s this wrecked, but she’s nothing if not thorough, and if she wants to sleep at all tonight, she’s still going to need to check his pupils. “Hey, wake up.” When she reaches out to shake his shoulder, it becomes clear that something is very wrong. First of all, he’s radiating heat under her hand, and not in a “spooky monster nonsense” way. Secondly, he’s trembling, even in unconsciousness. 

And finally, he barely stirs, face scrunching up in discomfort before he forces his eyes open just a crack. 

“B’sira,” he mumbles helplessly. 

Damn it. This was supposed to be quick and relatively painless. 

“Right,” she says for lack of anything better. It doesn’t take her long to tap out a quick explanation to Daisy and Melanie to let them know that she’ll be late, but even in that short span, Jon’s closes his eyes again. “Jon,” she barks. His eyes snap open. They do not track anything. “God. What’s wrong with you? You’re burning up.” 

He shakes his head stupidly. “Cold,” he argues, and then he pulls himself together for a coherent, if still not lucid, thought, eyebrows pulling together in what looks like concern. “You’ll freeze,” he tells her, eyeing her thin black shirt warily. She has to fight his hands down when he tries to waste energy he clearly doesn’t have taking off a cardigan he clearly wants to keep wearing. 

“Focus,” she snaps. “What is this? What’s the matter with you?” 

He blinks slowly, shakes his head. “Just not… feeling well,” he replies. It’s awful, hearing him sound so lost and confused and miserable. 

“Have you had a statement?” 

Jon looks horrified. “I haven’t--haven’t been—”

“I mean an old one,” she corrects as gently as she can. It’s not so gentle. He shrugs, looking dazedly at the folder next to him. 

“I can’t… remember whether I… whether I read this one.” Basira nods, opening the folder and sliding it in front of him. 

“You should do.” 

He squints at the words as if he’s trying to see through a dense fog, eyes scanning the whole document unsure of what he’s actually looking at, before closing his eyes with a soft groan. 

“Spinning,” he complains, pushing it away. “Nauseous.”

Basira sighs, weighing her options. She certainly doesn’t want to deal with this, but if she drops him off at a hospital in this state, there’s not likely much they’ll be able to do. It’s unlikely that this will respond to fever reducers, she thinks, though he could probably do with some fluids. 

“How long have you been like this?” she asks. This time, her tone is as soft as she hopes it is. 

He shrugs. As much as she wants to believe that the reason she’d had no idea he was so ill is because he’s been looking rough for weeks now, since he’s started weaning off even the old statements, but in the back of her mind, she’s forced to accept that really, it’s because she hasn’t asked. The worse he looked, she’d figured, the longer it meant he’d gone without a statement, and that was a good thing. She wonders if this is the sort of thing that gets worse before it gets better or if it just gets worse until he starves. 

“I’ll be back.” 

Jon doesn’t say anything as she leaves even though, when she returns with a few pills and a cup of water, he looks surprised that she’s come back. 

Or maybe he just doesn’t remember she’d been here in the first place. 

God, he’s hot under her hand when she sits him up, holds the cup of water to keep it from sloshing out as the cup shakes in his trembling hands. 

“Listen up,” she barks; “no sleeping.” She takes a deep breath to brace herself before jerking the folder into her hands and straightening the papers uselessly. “Statement of Janice Irwin, regarding an incident that occurred one night in the deep freezer of a restaurant where she worked. Statement begins.”


End file.
